Hacker News Reader

Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, as Apple tries to integrate more and more of the supply chain, and other computer-makers are copying Apple's business model, I predict that generic computers (the ones you install Linux on) will slowly disappear from the market.

View on HN

> I predict that generic computers (the ones you install Linux on) will slowly disappear from the market.

It seems the be going the opposite way, since by far and large there's more offering hardware wise than there has ever been, so what you see is manufacturers catering to niches more than before.

Here in Germany, the majority of DIY PC shops have died or are connected to the machine selling parts over the Internet.

Everyone just buys laptops with pre-installed OSes, phones and tablets.

Most parts shops are now targeting the Maker movement, aka Arduino, Raspberry and friends and even gamers prefer solutions like Asus Republic of Gamers series.

So actually it looks like the return of the vertical integration of 8 and 16 bit home markets of yore.

Agree with vbezhenar that Apple doesn't really budge the needle to make this happen. And then you have vendors like Dell that are specifically catering to the Linux market.

https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/dell-laptops-netbooks-and-ta...

Yes, but what prevents Dell from becoming more like Apple, e.g. by installing vendor lock-in features at the BIOS level, or work with Intel to install such features at the CPU level.

Also, you can buy a GPU but in some ways it is locked down (by NVidia), so as technology progresses we might be moving away from the "generically useful computer" model.

Because competition. It would only limit their market, not increase it. Dell competes with other laptop vendors in this "generic" market vs. the lock Apple has on their OS. And do you really think Intel would work with one specific vendor in this space to given them exclusive CPU features that nobody else would get?

NVidia has always been locked down so that is not news. If you are concerned about the GPU, buy AMD and enjoy their open drivers. Intel is entering this space too with open drivers as well. And who knows, perhaps NVidia might be opening up a bit after all vs. going the other way?

https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-doc

Android, ChromeOS and the now gone netbook market, show what happens when each OEM delivers their own Linux derived flavour.

Why is Android included?

I don't know, because it uses the Linux kernel and is a good example of OEM fragmentation?

Or should I rather write Android/Linux, ChromeOS/Linux, PuppyLinux, Xandros then?

I always wonder where apple is going to proprietary hardware. For example the “t2” chip, which seems to be a “computer in a computer” and only Apple. I suspect other hardware manufacturers just want windows to work for the most part.

From Wikipedia “Thge Apple T2 chip is a SoC from Apple first released in the iMac Pro 2017. It is a 64-bit ARMv8 chip (a variant of the A10, or T8010), and runs a separate operating system called bridgeOS 2.0,[95] which is a watchOS derivative.[96] It provides a secure enclave for encrypted keys, gives users the ability to lock down the computer's boot process, handles system functions like the camera and audio control, and handles on-the-fly encryption and decryption for the solid-state drive.[97][98][99]”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors

There are similar things in PC land and most of the time they can be disabled.

Things do not look as good in mobile space (mainly thanks to Qualcomm)

I am not sure this is true. I believe that generic computers will be in the market until there will be people willing to buy them.

“Generic computers” were never a thing. For decades, every computer shipped with Windows, the drivers were for Windows, the hardware was only tested on Windows, and to make it work, Linux would usually have to pretend to be Windows (e.g. when evaluating ACPI). Except for Macs, which were the same but with macOS. Most hardware was not documented. If Linux support existed, it was thanks to the work of reverse engineers; it often didn’t exist. If you bought a random laptop, you could expect some of the hardware to be unsupported.

These days… I’d say things aren’t all that different. On one hand, Linux has better hardware support overall, and Dell and some smaller manufacturers are offering Linux laptops. On the other, a lot of hardware still doesn’t work, or doesn’t work well. Some laptops have been getting more custom hardware, including Apple’s and others, and Linux has fallen behind a bit in supporting it. But it’s nothing new for Linux to take time to support new hardware.

Apple's market share is tiny. They don't have any significant influence on generic computers. I don't really see other vendors following Apple's model. I still can build PC from different parts, like 20 years ago and it just works. While I did not closely followed non-Apple laptops, I believe that they are the same, just ordinary computers with ordinary parts which can run Linux just fine, if drivers are implemented. Glued batteries and welded SSDs are cancer, yeah, but that's more about overall quality of the product, rather than restricting Linux to run. There are enough "Enterprise" laptops which you can disassemble with screwdriver and they are not going anywhere because enough people understand their value.

Isn't it a bit harsh to say that the company that practically shaped the very form of modern computers doesn't have any significant influence?

Well, I still can't install Linux on a phone. This tells me than once freedoms are lost, they don't easily come back and as we get new technology, it doesn't necessarily allow to run Linux.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com